Two Awesome Endings

The English teacher in my 11 yo daughter’s new school decided to play a game. “I’ll tell the first line of a story, and then we’ll go round the class. Each student should add one (and only one) line to the story”.

 

The teacher started with, “As I lay asleep at night, I heard a loud bang.” The first kid promptly responded, “I don’t know how to continue, m’am”. Really? Already? Minus one.

 

Thankfully, the next kid had seen plenty of TV. “I got out of bed to check what had caused the noise.” Good. “I saw there were burglars with guns.” Next. “I went back and got back my nerve gun.” Continue. “I then realized the burglars were in the neighbor’s house, not mine”. What?! The teacher accepted this outrageous line, probably because it added a कहानी में twist… The tale continued its way across the class. Abruptly, one kid decided to end it all, “Then I died”, he announced. The end.

 

Sometimes, a bad ending can ruin a great story or movie. In this case, it made an amusing-at-times, ok-at-others tale into a hilarious one.

~~

 

The game was repeated a few days later. The teacher started with, “I woke that morning at 5 o’clock”. The first kid said, “I had a flight to catch to go to my cousin’s wedding in Ahmedabad”. Continue. “I went to the wedding when suddenly a gang of masked men barged in”. Proceed. “They tied up all the guests, including me”. Next. “Luckily, I had a knife with me”. Go on. “I used the knife to free myself, and went and stabbed one of the goondas”. Too violent. “Ok then, I used the knife to free myself and escaped from the wedding hall”.

 

The tale continued. “I went to the airport.” Ok. “The flight back home got hijacked by masked men”. C’mon, not those masked men again. “Ok, ok, I reached home safely and went to play on the PS4 with my friends.” (PS4 – PlayStation 4 is a video game console). Next. I totally did not see this ending that the next kid came up with – “It turned out my friends were the masked men at the wedding in Ahmedabad”.

~~

 

During assembly, when the principal asked what the kids wanted to be when they grew up, these were the loud responses that my daughter remembered with glee. Toilet cleaner. And ice-cream taster. But the one she enjoyed the most was the muffled answer from one of her classmates – Drug dealer.

 

Given the creativity with that story telling activity, I’m surprised none of them thought of becoming a writer of fiction. Or a script writer for the movies. Then again, I guess that’s too tame when one has the option of becoming a drug dealer.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why we Deceive Ourselves

In their book, The Elephant in the Brain , the authors describe this weird aspect of deception that we practice: deceiving ourselves! That is so weird: “If our minds contain maps of our worlds, what good comes from having an inaccurate version of these maps?” The Sigmund Freud school of thought treats self-deception as a defense mechanism, “a way for the ego to protect itself”. The mind seeks to protect itself from anxiety and other negative emotions. Many object to this reasoning: since accurate information is so critical to our survival, surely distorting information would be dangerous. Wouldn’t the goal of protecting our self-esteem have been better achieved by making the brain’s self-esteem mechanism stronger instead? The new school of thought explains self-deception as “primarily outward-facing, manipulative, and ultimately self-serving”. This is based on Thomas Schelling’s work on game theory: “In a variety of scenarios, limiting or sabotaging yourself is the winn...
Read more

Europe #3 - Innsbruck

The last city we visited in Europe was Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. After the cold and windy experience (at times) of Paris and Netherlands, Innsbruck was a wonderful change – it didn’t feel that cold, it was not windy all of which made it easy to walk around. Something absolutely necessary given how scenic the place is.   Since the hotel check-in time was much later in the day, we left the baggage and went to the Swarovski HQ-cum-museum about an hour by bus from Innsbruck. The crystal exhibits were brilliant – colorful, bright, shiny. Jewellery aside, it was a display of what one can do with crystals. While my wife and daughter loved the jewellery, I liked the superhero themed exhibits of Batman, Spiderman, the Hulk, and Star Wars. We didn’t buy anything there, though we did buy stuff in the Swarovski store in Innsbruck – jewellery, not the superhero stuff.   Innsbruck is a major tourist attraction during the skiing season but now in summer, we saw many groups of ...
Read more

The Thrill of the Chase

So many people complain about the difficulty in making decisions while shopping. Do you buy Brand X that gives 20% extra free? Or Brand Y that has 10% off? Or Brand Z that gives something else free with it? Do you buy that flat screen TV today or wait for the sale at Diwali? Now since the customer is king, shouldn’t companies be simplifying pricing choices? Like maybe offering consistently low prices all the time? Not so fast, as the US store, JC Penney discovered to its cost. Turns out that while people do complain about pricing choices, they are irrational. Also, they enjoy the thrill of the chase. Huh? The word “sale” acts like a siren call for many people: it lures them in to make that purchase. Consistently low prices don’t do the same. Besides, if a competitor lowers their prices just one time of the year, and Poof! Suddenly that low price claim becomes suspect in shoppers’ eyes. Then there are those sites that offer coupons: have lunch at Restaurant A on Wedne...
Read more